zairja and llull ars magna

concerning the zairja and llull's ars magna of generating ideas mechanically - a technique for finding out answers from questions by means of connections existing between the letters of the expressions used in the questions. a kind of deconstruction since it was suggested it works from an agreement in the wording of questions and answer ... with the help of the technique called the technique of 'breaking down' (algebra). with the zairja they imagined that these connections could form basis for knowing the future happenings they wanted to know...

this might not have been as metaphysical as it seems, and might even be viewed as a system of logic. it could have been similar to exploring every possible outcome out of a set of variables, and that future happenings then were among those combinatorical possibilities, just as today we do computer simulations.

viewed the other way around, a computer simulation could also be expressed as a metaphysical process - of knowing future happenings by alchemically mixing the elements of the system.

the proof of the pudding is in the eating. a proverb going back at least to the 14th century of ramon llull. as this logical play didn't amount to useful predictions, or there was considerable fuzz in both questions and answers, it remained a system of metaphysics in their time.